Her report "Macedonia: Tracking Down the Refugee Kidnap Gangs"Pollini Women For Board Shoulder L Bag Burgundy wrpwHq won the London Foreign Press Association for News Story of the Year: TV award,[24] the Royal Television Society for The Independent Award,[25] and was nominated for the Amnesty International Media Award for News Story of the Year.[26]

City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death and the Search for Truth in Tehran[edit]

City of Lies explodes the stereotypes of rebellious young Iranians doing drugs and attending raves, as it also challenges those about devotion-addled zealots who have benefited from the rise of religion after the revolution.

Navai doesn’t shy away from drugs, sex and self-flagellation; she moves through stories about each to reveal the underlying motivations beneath the nose jobs and restitched hymens. “Sex,” she writes, “is an act of rebellion in Tehran. A form of protest. Only in sex do many of the younger generation feel truly free.” With a keen eye for the absurd, she watches prostitutes and taxi drivers approach one another awkwardly, unsure of who’s a trick and who’s a ride.

Navai's prose is startling. As they trudge up and down Vali Asr Street to work, eat, shop, pray, turn a trick, Navai's characters observe the wrecked beauty of the world around them. Through these observations, the book is elevated far above typical reportage. She picks up snatches of songs, poems, billboard propaganda and is quick to find the knife and turn the blade on the hypocrisy of the city she knows so well.

One regime billboard advises: 'Let's not spend too much time discussing society's problems in our homes.' As Bjian, her young gangster, drives to his meth lab, he listens to the music group Anonymous Sinners sing a satire of a famous old war song: 'There's no prostitution, no drugs, press freedom, food and jobs, oil money for everyone, people are so happy they never complain…' But in the course of the book we discover that complaining in Iran is de rigueur; an art form, even.

The demands of secrecy pervade every aspect of city life. Many people are trying to find a way to endure the challenges of poverty and an oppressive regime. The government is cutting down the sycamores on Vali Asr in the dead of night. No one knows why they do it at night, other than to avoid the voice of protest rising from the streets of Tehran. In Navai's energetic, eloquent book, these protests are sometimes a mumble, sometimes a scream.[27]

One of the world's most exciting cities, as revealed by one of journalism's most exciting women. Navai slips effortlessly into the boots of earthy, urban writer to tour Tehran's ripped backsides in this intimate, grand guignol debut.

She transports us through the Iranian capital's multiple personas with deft and knowing navigation: never short of love for even the lowliest of her fellow Tehranis. An intimate and devoted portrait, lifting a beautiful truth from a city masked in lies.[27]

Navai's prose is startling ... Navai's characters observe the wrecked beauty of the world around them. Through these observations, the book is elevated far above typical reportage. She picks up snatches of songs, poems, billboard propaganda and is quick to find the knife and turn the blade on the hypocrisy of the city she knows so well.[30]

This gripping book is a mosaic of such glimpses into a very different world ... the chapters read like utterly compelling short tales, catapulting us imaginatively into the hearts and minds of people we feel we know.[30]